Soccer in America did not start with Lionel Messi‘s arrival, nor David Beckham’s or even with the 1994 World Cup on these shores or the birth of MLS two years later.
The U.S. Open Cup is a reminder.
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Tracing its history to the 1914 competition for the National Challenge Cup, the Open Cup is well over 100 years old. The history of the competition itself tells many smaller stories about soccer in the U.S. and the country itself. There are changes in immigration, from Scottish and English arrivals winning the first trophies to Hispanic teams in the 1940s and 1950s to Ukrainians, Greeks and Israelis.
It tells a story about labor and about community, as company teams and social clubs put together teams that could brag they were the best in the country.
It tells a story about longevity, a trophy organized, contested, fought for and lifted no matter how many eyeballs were fixed on it – with even recent years sometimes suffering from apathy of MLS and some of its clubs.
As the the Columbus Crew host St. Louis City SC on Wednesday, Oct. 21, soccer in the U.S. looks much different than it did the last time a St. Louis team contested the final or even the last time Columbus was in the game back in 2010.
Yet, the thread connecting the sport to the version played on fields all over the U.S. in the past remains, and it will be evident in a romantic matchup between old-school soccer cities.
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St. Louis soccer history has many Open Cup winners
While St. Louis City started play just three years ago in 2023, the city has been home to 10 Open Cup winners. That speaks to the city’s long history with soccer. The first title was won by a team called Ben Millers, sponsored by a hat company, in 1920. The most recent came when an Anheuser-Busch affiliated team called St. Louis Busch Seniors beat the San Francisco Greek Americans in 1988.
St. Louis has changed since then, with the arrival of the MLS team and the building of its beautiful downtown stadium helping sooth some of the pain of frustrations like the NFL’s Rams skipping town. This year’s run to the USOC final – and the 21-game hot streak the club went on by avoiding defeat between May and the weekend match in which all attention was fixed on Wednesday’s title-decider – came as a surprise.
Still, the club took the time to recognize the squads that most recently lifted the Open Cup, putting an emphasis on the trophy at stake beyond simply the place in the 2027 Concacaf Champions Cup that would come with a win.
It has become de rigueur for new MLS stadiums to become a place to see and be seen, and St. Louis’ sterling expansion season only made the team more popular.
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Now, the team sits on the verge of adding another trophy to St. Louis’ long soccer history with its first major trophy, though another club with plenty of history stands in its way.
Columbus gave the U.S. a home of soccer
In a country as large as the U.S., designating a national stadium never made much sense, but there was no doubt where the biggest games would take place for several decades – and it wasn’t the country’s business or cultural hub.
It was Columbus, Ohio.
Designated as a place that would not be hospitable to the Mexico national team in World Cup qualification, Columbus hosted five of the U.S.-Mexico rivalry matches, with the U.S. winning the first four.
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Columbus didn’t have a soccer stadium by accident. Lamar Hunt, the sports business pioneer whose name now is on the Open Cup, became owner of the team in 1996 and after a couple seasons at Ohio State University opted to build the first soccer-specific stadium in the U.S. there.
The Crew enjoyed a fair amount of success at its first home, winning the U.S. Open Cup there in 2002 thanks to a goal from Guatemala international Freddy Garcia.
In another extremely American twist, Columbus nearly lost its franchise, with ownership wanting to uproot the Crew and turn them into Austin FC. But that ignited the local fan base, who successfully started a movement to #SaveTheCrew.
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The result was a team staying in Columbus under new ownership and becoming one of the league’s model clubs, with a new, modern stadium opening in 2021 that will host this year’s USOC final, the latest in a line of important matches or finals hosted there because of the team’s success.
U.S. soccer history that won’t be fogotten
With every MLS team set to return to the USOC field and the league’s calendar shifting to align with European leagues – and avoid key moments on the U.S. sports calendar – the Open Cup might be primed to make a push for more attention from even casual soccer fans across the nation.
In a time when it is easy to dismiss portions of American soccer as plastic or over-produced, the matchup between Columbus and St. Louis serves as a reminder. Your fan experience is what you make of it, but the sport has been in the U.S. for more than a century – and it will be here for another.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: US Open Cup final a reminder soccer history started long before Messi and MLS
